Wizards of Smart

If you have tried any of Erlang, Axum, or even F#, you’ll be familiar with the Actor model and coordinated, concurrent programming using channels. While looking through the Reactive Extensions, released during PDC 2009, I was intrigued by the ISubject<T> and ISubject<T1, T2> interfaces that implement both IObservable<T> and IObserver<T>. I asked whether this could be used as an Actor and received a response from none other than Erik himself that it was possible. Here’s the simple Ping Pong example, similar to those for Erlang, Axum, and F#. The good news is that this same approach will be available in all of the .NET languages, including F#. I wonder what the preferred F# approach will be.

I presented this at Houston Tech Fest 2009 back in September.

I am very excited to note that the F# PowerPack has been released for VS2010. So what are you waiting for? Go grab it!

Also, I had performed some tests comparing F# with C# data access and was surprised by the results. Once I get the PowerPack installed for VS2010, I want to re-run it and see if it runs any differently in .NET 4.0, then I’ll post what I found.

I’m quite interested in Matthew Podwysocki’s application of F# (and functional programming) to collective intelligence. Have any of you worked in the collective intelligence space? If so, with what languages, and what was your experience?

Does anyone know of a project to implement Tutorial D in F#, similar to the Dee project for Python? I’m currently trying to get Dee working on IronPython, which would get me closer to my goal of using a true relational model for data access. I would like to stick with a .NET implementation, so that leaves out Rel. I have tried Dataphor, but I find it trying to be too much a complete platform and not easy to use as just a utility. I think either a good C# or F# implementation would be both excellent to have and a fun project on which to work. Anyone interested?